Stats from the Mirror.co.uk suggest that 40million items were purchased over the Thanks Giving weekend. While predominantly this is an American holiday, and the sales aren’t traditional over here, we have suitably followed in their footsteps.
Consumers have been taken in over the last two years, to spending a lot of money across the final weekend in November where retailers slash prices and present irresistible promotions.
However, while we may all be guilty of spending an extra few pounds and treating others, and ourselves what happens behind the scenes, with the retailers? How do they withstand the sheer level of consumers coming to their online store in such a small window of time? Well, read on to get an idea of the madness that is ‘Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the backend’.
Every year we hear the sad news that orders and parcels get lost in the post and seem never to be found again. In addition to this, the mounting pressure on delivery companies is reaching boiling point. With so many consumers opting to go online, the industry is booming, but the decreasing amount of drivers is not helping.
It is thought that around 10% of orders won’t be delivered on time, due to poor backend systems and order fulfilment processes.
With so much hype around the retail weekend, what can you do to be prepared and ensure that your customers receive the service that they are expecting and paying for via your E-commerce website?
Are your servers secure?
At i3media.net, we host our clients on the UK’s largest server network and work hard to liaise with these guys to ensure everyone is kept running at optimal performance levels.
If you are currently noticing slow load times or trouble with the site upon heavy traffic volumes, then your hosting could be the potential issue.
Is your order fulfilment up to scratch?
Taking the payment for goods is one aspect, but ensuring they reach their destination is the next big thing. Once a customer places their order, what is your system process? Do you have the option to message the customer directly through the CMS if there is some delay or other problem?
i3MEDIA has taken the time to ensure that we have integrated with the top leading couriers such as DHL and Royal Mail, effectively reducing error rates from manual input to 0%.
Do you have a fast or guest checkout option?
Unfortunately, people begin to lose their patience around this time of year and want to be ‘in and out’ as it were. Is your website capable of offering a swift check-out process, or a guest-checkout option? If not, it is possible that you will have a significantly higher dropout rate. Laziness, eh?
If anything that we have mentioned above resonates with you or has caused a few hiccups over the weekend, get in touch with our team who will have no problem taking you through the system and chatting with you about where you may potentially be slipping up.